I’ve also removed the forum from the site, that was never gonna get used anyway. Expect some more site changes along the way, gonna try and spiffy this site up again.

Anyway, the plan for the summer AT hike is this.

Start at Springer Mtn here in Georgia and hike until maybe Deep Gap (can’t really just stop at the state line, nothing there).

Anyways, might just make this site about my travel exploits I think

That’s right, after years of watching Amazing Race and checking in on our weekly Amazing Race maps, it is your turn to compete in the July 28th – August 6th Competitours challenge.

Oh, and there is more. Remember the Amazing Race winners from Season 9, “The Hippies?” Well the one and only Tyler MacNiven will be participating in the race with his Mom. Yes, that means you get to compete to dethrone the champion Tyler and his Mom.

HOW TO WIN
Leave a comment on this story describing the perfect “Competitours” challenge. Remember, these challenges are far more “Mole” than “MTV’s Gauntlet.” Meaning your entry will be judged based on originality, practicality, and intelligence. Some challenges include rounding 15 strangers up to the top of the Eiffel Tower to do the can-can, searching for obscure objects in an open-air market or thinking up new uses for torture items on display in a torture museum.

Just try to be resourceful and creative as you come up with these challenges, and remember, everything is put on digital video, so your challenge should have a visual component. For more sample Competitours challenges, go here.

ENTER JAUNTED’S FREE TRIP TO EUROPE FROM COMPETITOURS CONTEST

If anyone has any hints/tips/people I might contact, let me know! I would love to be able to take part in this event!

I was in Niagara Falls not too long ago, but since it wasn’t tourist season most everything was closed and wasn’t able to partake of this experience. I think this might be more of an activity for men since it’s the sort of thing we are into; I can’t help it, this stuff is really fascinating.

The tours are 90 minutes long and cost $20.

From their website:

If you think Luciano, Gotti, or Capone was the biggest mobster in America, you’re wrong. Stefano “The Undertaker” Magaddino was more powerful, had a bigger territory and was deadlier than all of them. Magaddino was unlike many mob bosses, yet born of the same mold. Smart, conniving, deceitful, rich, yet he took care of many people in the Niagara Falls area.

Painstakingly researched by author and historian Mike Rizzo, only on The Mob Tours^TM, a 90-minute guided bus tour in Niagara Falls, will you learn the truth about his life, his legacy, and the F.B.I.’s determined effort to take him out.

When I make it back to Niagara Falls, this will be something I will do. Here is their FAQ, well worth a look over for more info. http://www.themobtours.com/index.php/about-us.html

This is not a trip for the faint of heart or anyone looking to chill out, eat regularly or turn in early. But for adventurous travelers looking for something different, this be the trip. 

 Arriving in Europe, we all were buzzed with excitement for the competition.  Not knowing where we would be going the next day also kept our adrenalin high. 

The challenges were….challenging, the locations interesting (Brugge was a highlight for us ) and our fearless leader Steve was friendly, helpful, always available and always unruffled in the face of his own challenges.  But our favorite part of the trip were our fellow Competitourers. It’s interesting what happens when you travel for a week with a bunch of people who start out as strangers. Verrrrrry interesting – and very rewarding as wonderful new friendships form.

Would we recommend Competitours? Already have.  

The first round there was a lot of learning and changing to the game. All for the better of course. Competiters don’t have to worry about uploading media themselves from now on. All they have to do is hand it off on a flash drive or something to a Competitours official and that’s its.

If we get the opportunity to compete, we will definitly be uploading video of our own, and hopefully much more frequent that what was uploaded this time around. Video coverage of these events is really awesome to watch from places around Europe.

We appreciate everyone’s patience in waiting for the scores to be tallied.
 
What happened?
 
Well, we learned a valuable lesson this first trip.  Eleven teams vying for internet connectivity and loads of bandwidth at the same time from a small hotel’s even smaller wi-fi capacity, is not gonna work!  So, after the second night of teams being frustrated and blurry-eyed deep into the evening, we made an executive decision to delay video uploading until teams got back to the States on Monday.  
 
Some teams were a little slower than others uploading their remaining videos, and our judges were only expecting to be available through end of last week.  So, those two issues resulted in Thursday night, not Monday night to announce our final audited judging results.
 
For upcoming trips, teams will have NO uploading responsibility, they will simply load their videos onto portable memory devices (like an SD card or thumbdrive), hand them to our tour escort, who will deal with any technical snafus with uploading, while teams can enjoy their evenings blissfully unaware or uncaring of the uploading process….as it should be!!
  

Withour further ado, here are the standings:

I posted a day 4 video and post on Gadling. I doubt if my wife and I had found ourselves in Brussels on a vacation we would have ventured into the town of Gent, but that’s one of the things that makes Competitours so exciting. You never know where you’ll be going next.

And Gent was well worth the visit!

Here are a few scenes of some of the competitourists on Thursday:

Friday’s post is coming soon. We should have some final scores for both the Monday to Wednesday and the Thursday and Friday competition by then.

A special thanks to Flyertalk for sponsoring some of the nicest people around to participate in this competition. We really enjoyed them all!

Kent and Linda